Good Graphic Novels

It's Beauchard but lazier and for women.

This is really uninteresting criticism.

fitting for a bland, uninteresting graphic novel

Four Problems with Graphic Novel Fame and Reviews
The graphic novels that gain the most critical acclaim, and often become bestsellers as a result (“crossover hits” from the comic store to the bookstore) often follow some fairly predictable patterns, and reflect the prejudices, ignorance, and specific tastes of the book critics and public who are often not overly familiar with the genre’s history, with graphic/paratextual conventions, or with the range of work being done. That’s not to say that they choose “wrongly,” but there are, I think, some frustrating issues at work here.
1. Nobody really cares much about the drawing
Drawing skill (and there is such a thing) is hard to judge, and requires some knowledge of art: ideally from someone who has tried to construct graphic narratives themselves, but at least from someone who has seen many examples and taken an active interest in how comic pages are rendered.
The reality, however, is that most people didn’t grow up reading comics, or stopped long before they because discerning viewers. This means that they often find complex layouts confusing, and highly-detailed art excessive or boring. Artists who use a highly simplified or even childlike style, such as Bryan Lee O'Malley’s Scott Pilgrim books or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, are easier to read and considered more appealing by those for whom the art risks being a distraction to the script. The ghost of Bauhaus and its radically minimalist graphic design has shaped our modern urban landscape, so it’s hardly surprising that most of us have no interest in elaborate visual detail.

2. This is me in Grade 9, baby
The surest way to get a comic taken seriously these days is to write autobiography. From Chester Brown to Craig Thompson, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel, from David Small to Seth, autobiography has ruled alternative comics for at least the past twenty years. That’s fine, but it has crippled the genre’s growth in terms of mainstream acceptance. It’s as if the format (little drawings and word balloons!) is so inherently silly that it can only be justified if the story itself is “true,” and preferably depressing. In the one and only genre that allows for unlimited special effects at no added costs, many artists are determined to provide the most prosaic and realistic—even mundane—stories possible. Even those who write fiction or semi-fictional accounts often go for this unrelenting gloom: Chris Ware’s award-winning Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, is visually brilliant, but unspeakably bleak. Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World is angst-ridden but at least has wry humour to sustain it. Of course some stories, like Maus, David Small’s Stitches or Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, are extraordinary true narratives, while others, like Lynda Barry’s many family autobiographies, the searing Daddy’s Girl by Debbie Drechsler, or Roberta Gregory’s Bitchy Bitch books, are anything but dull. Nonetheless, there is almost a prejudice against fiction in graphic novels now, and that leaves a lot of great work out in the cold.

3. Oh, I only read superhero comics ironically
It’s hard to convince anyone to take guys in tights seriously these days--look at the drastic lengths to which recent movies have gone to make their superheroes “realistic”—but as long as those admittedly stale conventions are being obviously subverted, everyone feels smart about reading them. The top example of this, of course, is Alan Moore’s Watchmen (in which only one character actually has any superpowers, and the rest of them are pretty un-heroic in their different ways). Miracleman, a title worked on by both Moore and Neil Gaiman, again revolves around reinventing the tired clichés of the genre. This was an essential part of the comic renaissance of the 1980s: the young British writers Marvel and DC hired had little respect for the sacred cows of the U.S. tradition and gleefully deconstructed them.
The problem is that this tradition’s popularity now makes it difficult to respect anyone who writes an excellent superhero comic (of which there are many) without taking that stance. Similarly, writers like Neil Gaiman who work within the field but steer mostly clear of tights and fistfights brought a whole new audience to comics, but the difference was perhaps less about amazing quality (Gaiman’s scripts > everyone else’s) and more a question of bringing dark fantasy and horror into the limelight. Gaiman is a fascinating and imaginative writer, but he’s far from perfect. The mere fact that DC was the one publishing Sandman and the other Vertigo titles, however, was a triumph.

4. Don’t you have anything more…exotic or traumatic?
This last point is hardly specific to comics, but the great rise in popularity of post-colonial immigrant and foreign life experience novels (Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, etc., etc.), has been reflected by the fame of graphic novels like Persepolis, Craig Thompson’s Habibi, Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon’s Pride of Baghdad, and even the old-world appeal of Tintin. And along with the autobiographical dominance has come a rise in explorations of marginalized life experiences in general (gay coming-of-age stories such as Fun Home), the taboo subjects of rape and incest (Daddy’s Girl, Bryan Talbot’s The Tale Of One Bad Rat), and the complex unique dysfunctions to which families are prone (David Beauchard’s L'Ascension du haut mal [Epileptic in English]). The fantastic work of Los Bros Hernandez (Love and Rockets, Heartbreak Soup, Palomar, etc.) straddles both aspects. Exploring the unfamiliar is a cornerstone of fiction, of course, but combined with the current demand for realistic autobiography, “alternative” (non-superhero) comics have developed an interesting profile that plays with the heimlich / unheimlich balance. Comics have become a notable source of social information in a way that perhaps turns a blind eye to their highly subjective, simplified, and idiosyncratic nature.
So, what’s left?
None of this a problem, really, and the increased mainstream acceptance of the genre of graphic narrative has led inexorably to greater respect and academic attention. The unevenness of these responses is understandable given the genre’s history. Nor am I here to breathlessly list all the great graphic works that are not included in the above rough categories. All trends of style and subject will eventually be overtaken or replaced, and there will always be writers and artists fighting against the current of their day (fortunately, for those of us who love detailed draughtsmanship and fantastical storylines). This is just a long-winded observation on the current state of affairs as it appears to me. Most of the works I have mentioned here are well worth a read, and if some are over-praised in my estimation, that’s inevitable in any area one feels passionate about.

came here to post ghost world
do you happen to have any other recs similar?
I'm thinking of checking out the rest of clowes work which should be a good idea

Who are the best cartoonists? People in the vein of Crumb. They always give me a good kek.

I like Viz too, but they're not really as clever as some of Crumb's stuff is.

I unironically enjoy classic capeshit. I can't stand the edgy subversive capeshit.

The best comic is Cerebus LOL

I miss classic capeshit.
I'm still waiting the Shazam revival

they all suck

Have you actually read Cerebus? I got to Latter Days, and haven't been able to make it through the slog of pseudo-theological exegesis.

If you liked Ghost World you may find something similar (though, less 90s angst and more contemporary mental-illness/depressive themes) in Megg, Mogg & Owl comics which are beautiful looking and pretty funny.

I've only read Patience by Clowes outside of Ghost World, but I didn't think it was that good. This isn't a comic, but Clowes also did the poster for the movie "Happiness" by Todd Solodnz which has a very similar vibe and is also pretty good ;)

I really enjoyed one but I can't remember its name. It was an autobiography of one of the guys who wrote for Superman once. He was trying to figure out a weakness for Superman. That's what the whole novel was about and it also reflected his life in some way. I think he had cancer.

Maybe about Allstar Superman? Superman gets cancer in that comic pretty much.

depressing af

No it's an autobiography of the writer, told though the medium of a graphic novel, about him trying to figure out a weakness for Superman while he gets diagnosed with cancer or some other ailment.

Sounds like "Secrets of the Cancer-Slaying Super Man"

>Nobody really cares much about the drawing
How can you not care about the drawing? You can say that people would prefer different kind of drawing, and all those different types would have their own merit of quality. Not to mention that each artist possesses his own style of drawing.

You obviously care about what you look at in a comic (I don't want to call it graphic novel), and it must have an aesthetic to it, tone, dynamic, it's own visual symbols and etc. Because if you don't care about it, you will look for a text, and you would not discuss comics and say that nobody cares about their drawings

Haven't read any in a while but Blankets and Habibi were pretty good.

Nice

Sounds like it but isn't. It wasn't a boyhood story. It was about the writer being told he was being given Superman, he gets writers block because he can't find a weakness. I think it was called "I Can Fly Too" or something.

Found it! It was called "It's a Bird" by Steven T Seagle

This is horribly unscientific, but over the years I've spoken to many people who didn't grow up reading comics and who were reading one for the first time (more or less), including hundreds of undergrad students (I usually include one graphic novel on a reading list for genre fiction courses). Their most common reactions were to be dismissive of the art, confused by panel arrangement and any purely visual clues and points, and happiest when the art --as in Persepolis-- was very clear and simple. It makes perfect sense: they aren't used to the vocabulary of graphic narrative and aren't reading for the art, and they don't have much basis for comparison by which to judge or understand such elements. They approach comics like they were reading a play with helpful visual guides to staging.

Larry Gonick is great.
Also, a shitload of Japs. Mangaka are cartoonists by any definition, and the Japanese take the artform a lot more seriously than we do.

half-leech on ptp, i'll give it a watch

fun home. is it good? i started are you my mother and hated it. she just talks about herself.

Never knew that Clowes did that poster, but I knew I recognized the style from somewhere

They're both autobiographical, but Fun Home is an interesting story about an interesting father and herself. Are You My Mommy is an uninteresting story about herself and her uninteresting mother.

Fun Home's way better.

40 replies and no Will Eisner? No Moebius (aka Jean Girard)? Pfft.You kids don't seem to know anything.

Anything by Will Eisner I think is great, if you've ever read his Comics And Sequential Art you'll know he's a guy who totally understood the potential of the medium. I really love The Big City and City People Notebook where he demonstrates what a comic artist can achieve, like communicating smells or sounds in a purely visual medium. What makes him truly great is using that skill to tell intimate human stories about life experiences.

The real problem, I find, is that a lot of the public separate the art and writing. Discussion is either about how pretty certain pages look or what the plot's about (that's exaggerating a bit but you get my meaning). Eisner pointed to research showing that people interpret a series of pictures similarly to language, which really made it click for me. In comics the art and writing are one and the same, it's a unique medium.

Punpun is a Veeky Forums manga
Might seem a bit edgy at times, but it's characters are great. It's a good story and it uses the art as more than just visuals to the story, if that makes sense. The Creator clearly knew what he was going to do from the beginning, nothing is out of place.

...

The Invisibles is excellent

Not that guy, but I am currently reading Cerebus, it's been going at a slow pace because I've been reading it on and off, not constantly. I've finished Jaka's Story and will tackle the next arc soon.
It's been pretty god-tier for now.
>pseudo-theological exegesis
I did read that he became religious and the comic went in a totally different direction, but surely it isn't bad?

I tried reading it, but couldn't get past all the drug shit and eastern pseudophilosophy nonsense that was stuffed down my throat, so I dropped it around the time they got Marquiz de Sade from his time period.

I like Clowes in general.
>David Boring
closest to Ghost World
>Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
fucked up fever dream
>Death Ray
a gloomy superhero story

He recently wrote Patience, haven't read it yet.

Why is the chubby nerd up front? He seemed like a secondary character. Mostly the language teacher and psychologist seemed like the main characters.